Get started

Quick start

If you'd like to start exploring PatternFly Elements right away, checkout our Quick start demo page.

Install PatternFly Elements

Depending on the tool you use to manage dependencies (npm, yarn, etc.) use the command line to install the components you’d like as a dependency of your project like this:

npm install --save @patternfly/pfe-card
npm install --save @patternfly/pfe-cta

This will install not only the pfe-card and pfe-cta, but also the core utilities and styles, and will save it to your package-lock.json.

Include PatternFly Elements JavaScript

There are a few options for including PatternFly Elements into your site or app.

In HTML

You may load the JavaScript via <script type="module">. List out all the components you may include on your page, and the browser will fetch the dependencies dynamically on load. Learn more about JavaScript modules.

In this example, we load the card and cta modules from https://unpkg.com.

<script type="module" src="https://unpkg.com/@patternfly/pfe-card?module"></script>
<script type="module" src="https://unpkg.com/@patternfly/pfe-cta?module"></script>

In JavaScript modules

Include the PatternFly Element web component and its dependencies within the app. When using a bundler such as esbuild or rollup with @rollup/plugin-node-resolve, use bare module specifiers to import the components.

import '@patternfly/pfe-card';
import '@patternfly/pfe-cta';

Add PatternFly Elements markup

Add a call-to-action component.

<pfe-cta>
  <a href="https://patternflyelements.org">PatternFly Elements</a>
</pfe-cta>

Add a card component.

<pfe-card>
  <h3 slot="header">Card header</h3>
  <p>This is the pfe-card body.</p>
  <div slot="footer">
    <p>This is the footer</p>
  </div>
</pfe-card>

Add attributes

Attributes can be used to adjust a theme, a palette color, a priority, set default values, etc. Be sure to check out the "Attributes" section for each component to see which attributes are available.

Change the priority of a call-to-action component using the priority attribute.

<pfe-cta priority="primary">
  <a href="https://patternflyelements.org">PatternFly Elements</a>
</pfe-cta>

Change the color-palette value of a card component to change its appearance using the color-palette attribute.

<pfe-card color-palette="accent">
  <h3 slot="header">Card header</h3>
  <p>This is the pfe-card body.</p>
  <div slot="footer">
    <p>This is the footer</p>
  </div>
</pfe-card>

Use CSS variables to customize or theme your components

CSS variables are subject to the normal cascade, so consider where you want these overrides to propogate.

Page-level CSS, theme variables

Theme variables will impact all components on the page where this CSS is loaded.

// your-page.css
:root {
  --pfe-theme--color--ui-accent: green;
  --pfe-theme--color--surface--darker: navy;
}

Note: overriding local variables (i.e., –pfe-cta–foo) will not work at this level. Those overrides can only be done on the component via tag name, class, or ID.

Page-level CSS, component variables

/* your-page.css */
pfe-cta {
  --pfe-cta--BackgroundColor: pink;
  --pfe-cta--Color: black;
}

pfe-band {
  --pfe-band--Padding--vertical: 34px;
  --pfe-band--BackgroundColor: green;
  --theme: saturated;
}

Component-level inline CSS

As a last resort, you may choose to override variables with inline styles. This could be desirable if you only need one component to deviate from the design system. Note that this incurs some level of risk, especially related to colors, as you are opting out of the color combinations in the system.

<pfe-cta style="--pfe-cta--BackgroundColor: pink">
  <a href="https://patternflyelements.org">PatternFly Elements</a>
</pfe-cta>

Avoiding the flash of unstyled content (FOUC)

PatternFly Elements provides a stylesheet that causes the body[unresolved] attribute to avoid the flash of unstyled content (FOUC). Adding the unresolved attribute to the body tag will hide the entire page until all elements have upgraded or 0.1618 seconds have passed, whichever happens first. By including the pfe--noscript.css file (wrapped in a noscript tag), all content displays immediately on pages with JavaScript disabled.

To customize the wait time, update the value of the --pfe-reveal-delay variable (default 2 second delay) and the --pfe-reveal-duration variable (how long the reveal animation takes, default 0.1618 seconds).

To prevent the auto-reveal script from waiting for all Patternfly elements to update, add the no-auto-reveal attribute to the body element.

In this example, we load PatternFly elements from https://jspm.dev. Replace the URLs with a CDN of your choice or locally-bundled files, depending on your needs.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <title>PatternFly Elements - Avoiding the FOUC</title>
  <!-- Add PFE core styles to the head -->
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://jspm.dev/@patternfly/pfe-styles@2.0.0/pfe.min.css">
  <style>
    :root {
      /* Optional: customize the delay until the body is revealed regardless */
      --pfe-reveal-delay: 1;
      /* Optional: customize the animation duration of the reveal */
      --pfe-reveal-duration: 0.2s;
    }
  </style>
  <!-- Add noscript styles to immediately reveal content when JavaScript is disabled -->
  <noscript>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://jspm.dev/@patternfly/pfe-styles@2.0.0/pfe--noscript.min.css">
  </noscript>
  <script type="module" src="https://jspm.dev/@patternfly/pfe-band@2.0.0"></script>
</head>
<!-- Add the unresolved attribute to the body tag -->
<!-- The pfe-core library and pfe.min.css file automatically remove the unresolved attribute -->
<body unresolved>
  <pfe-band>
    <h1 slot="header">No FOUC</h1>
    <p>Content will remain hidden until component definitions are loaded.</p>
  </pfe-band>
</body>
</html>